A few years before Yellow Magic Orchestra would become Ryuichi Sakamoto’s claim to fame, his name appeared on an album cover for the first time. Disappointment-Hateruma was recorded in 1976, when Sakamoto was still a student at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, together with multi-instrumentalist and percussionist Toshiyuki Tsuchitori. On this album, he explores territories he would rarely revisit: free improvisation and Free Jazz.
On the 20-minute »Aya«, Tsuchitori’s enthusiasm for African rhythms comes to the fore, demonstrating what he had absorbed from his role model, the American Free Jazz drummer Milford Graves. Sakamoto responds to the intense percussive assaults with piano playing of such rigour it suggests an apprenticeship under Cecil Taylor. Across the three shorter pieces on the second side, Sakamoto and Tsuchitori experiment with prepared piano, bells, gongs, marimba, synthesiser and their own voices – moving between ambient textures, deconstructed Japanese folk and Musique concrète.
